If the proposed legislation "Distributing the State's Shares of Bank Leumi to the Public, 2005" is approved by the Knesset Finance Committee tomorrow, the citizens of Israel will find themselves naked and exposed to an intrusive and unbridled government.

Next time Netanyahu stands before the blackboard with a felt pen in his hand, and with great confidence draws the future, it would be a very good idea to have a small child (or a courageous economist) around to cry out that even if the king is not entirely naked, his handling of the facts requires watching every word that comes out of his mouth like a hawk.

If, for the sake of government solidarity, the Labor Party ignores the violation of workers' rights, Netanyahu will be even happier. He has nothing to lose. This is Bibi's time. When we awaken, we will only be able to feel sorry.

While thousands of public school teachers worried about layoffs and cutbacks are protesting, teachers in ultra-Orthodox schools are unruffled. Their jobs are secure, and their terms of employment won't suffer.

Only when funds are allocated toward helping needy children will the words "for the future of our children" be transformed from a class policy serving the middle class to a social policy serving all of Israel's children.

The fact that the Republicans succeeded in appropriating the terms "family values" and have become the knights of "morality" is their most significant victory, says Prof. George Lakoff, a Berkeley linguist.

Israel invests in its students far less than any other Western country. The result is the continuous erosion of the ability of the students to compete, the breakdown of research, a steadily increasing brain drain and the continuing weakening of the higher education system.

It turns out that rather than three branches of government in Israel there are four: the government is the legislature, the treasury is the executive, the Knesset is in charge of complaining, and the High Court of Justice is the judiciary and enforcer.

A real counterweight to the right will be created only when the peace camp rises up on its feet, returns to its values and to itself, supports the disengagement but does not see it as the be-all and end-all, is not ashamed to speak in favor of negotiations with the Palestinians as the only way to manage the conflict and advance the political process, and offers its supporters the hope that one day there will yet be peace here.

Like insurance companies, the State of Israel has a key to the cost of a life. But unlike insurance companies, this key has absolutely no relation to the person who has been hurt, to the length of the life that has been cut short or disrupted, or to its quality.

Should the Labor party decide to join the government, and to support continued presence in Gaza for many years, the division of Gaza and the West Bank, and the continuation of settlement activity, it will cease to provide an ideological alternative.

Anyone really interested in democracy and national strength, and not merely in good public relations, must stop a minute and act with the Knesset, to restore its status and place as the stage on which to debate and make the decisions molding the state's future.

The Education Ministry published a small booklet, consisting of 100 basic concepts divided into three categories: heritage, Zionism and democracy. A quick scrutiny of the contents will find that the booklet makes no mention of Arabs, Bedouin, Druze, Circassians, Christians or any other minority living in Israel.

The orchestrated attack by the right on the appropriation of Rabin's memory obliterates the fact that today too, the prime minister and Yahalom can participate in endless official ceremonies and condemn the assassination. Have they done so? Have the settlers held a single official memorial? According to a map of events published by the Rabin Center, the answer is no.

The invention and development of the "nobody to talk to" theory was a matter of political genius. Through it, the assumption that we are fated to fight the Palestinians forever will last for us, our children, and our children's children.

Netanyahu, it turns out, wants to renew the "religion of work." If he had the courage, he'd commission a large mural, the kind that used to decorate the Kremlin, in which muscular heroes are depicted wielding sickles and women are shown at work on the production line.

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